The Prime Minister of the Five Kingdoms spent nearly a month in Taoqiu from April to the end of May. And the news of the Hezong Alliance spread all over the world, and then the Qin State reacted, and Zhang Yi took action to promote the three-phase alliance, and it was already September. And if you want to wait for the three phases to arrive at Taoqiu to hold the alliance meeting, it will take at least a month.

Dai Yan was a little shocked at the slow reaction of the world's politics at this time, but after seeing too much, he got used to it. In an era dominated by agriculture, the world is divided into several countries, and it is really abnormal to make decisions between countries too quickly!

In Dai Yan's view, the three kingdoms of Qin, Chu, and Qi surprisingly unanimously chose Taoqiu as the location of the triumph alliance without face-to-face consultation. This shows that the influence of Taoqiu has been played out now, and it has begun to gradually have the kind of influence of Geneva in later generations!

And under such an influence, it did bring some different changes to Taoqiu, which made Dai Yan have to stop directly interfering in the arrangement of the three-phase alliance and focus on it.

This happened a month after the end of the Five Kingdoms. After the king of the five kingdoms, Taoqiu became famous all over the world, and nobles and celebrities from all over the world began to gather in Taoqiu. In the process, it also brought something to Taoqiu that had not been seen before.

A scholar who claimed to be suppressed by the nobles of the Chu State came to Taoqiu, and as soon as he arrived in Taoqiu, after inquiring about the reputation of the local auction house in Taoqiu, he took out a treasure for auction through an intermediary, which immediately shook the entire Taoqiu!

In this way, the treasure is as famous as He's Bi, known as one of the two treasures of the Spring and Autumn Period!

There are legends about Suihou beads, and there are many in history. One of the most famous is that this thing was saved by a big snake when he was on a trip, and after the big snake recovered, he came back with a precious pearl of the night. And this night pearl is the pearl of waiting.

In history, the Suihou Bead is not a completely fictitious treasure. Because Li Si, the prime minister of the Qin Empire who unified the world in later generations, clearly mentioned that Qin Shi Huang had the treasure of easy-going and harmony in his "Book of Exhortations" to Qin Shi Huang.

The Suihou Pearl finally fell into the hands of Qin Shi Huang!

For such a legendary treasure, Dai Yan, as a traverser, is of course very interested!

As the owner of Taoqiu, he wanted to see this treasure in advance from the auction house, so naturally there was no problem. However, when he saw the retinue bead with his own eyes, his eyes were about to fall off!

In his opinion, where is the night pearl that can shine on its own? It's just a hand-processed glass bead!

Such a bead is not a smooth spherical shape like the night pearl seen in later generations, but a slightly oval bead. The bead looks green on the surface, but on both sides of the bead, there are hand-carved circles of patterns, which look like two eyes distributed on the bead. If you look at it from the aesthetic perspective of the people of this era, such a thing looks a little like beautiful jade, and it seems to be "full of spirituality", which is a natural treasure!

However, in Dai Yan's eyes, this thing is not surprising, because in his opinion, such an opaque glass can be described as the worst quality glass, and this thing itself is worthless!

However, Dai Yan was very interested in the refining method of this thing. He himself knows a little about glass, and he generally knows that glass is a silicate material, and he knows a little about its properties, but he is not particularly clear about the specific production method.

Dai Yan immediately called the scholar who presented the waiting beads through the auction house. As soon as Dai Yan saw this person, he could know that this person did not look like a celebrity nobleman, but rather like an alchemist he had dealt with in his spare time in the Qi Kingdom.

The person who put the Sui Hou Zhu up for auction claimed to be a descendant of the perished Sui Kingdom, named Dan. For this Sui Dan, Dai Yan said to him without the slightest politeness: "I am Tao Qiujun, the master of this place. I don't dare to be interested in the Suihou beads you brought, but if you can offer the glass, oh, that is, the refining method of the Suihou beads, I can let you give you the highest level and the longest patent in Taoqiu, and in the future, only you can refine the Suihou beads in Taoqiu! ”

Sui Dan wanted to deny it at first, stating there that this thing was born, and it was a treasure that the son of the dragon king gave to Suihou, and such a treasure was born, not refined. However, Dai Yan did not panic at all, and said directly to him: "Sui Dan, you have to think clearly." If I had declared directly in the Taoqiu newspaper that your retinue bead was not as divine as the legend had been, then your bead would not have been sold for a good price! ”

After listening to this, Sui Dan also knew that Dai Yan was such a powerful monarch in Taoqiu. And he also noticed the bad eyes of the guards around Dai Yan, and he didn't dare to really confront a powerful feudal monarch like Dai Yan, so he told him about the refining method of this thing.

The principle of refining the waiting beads is actually very simple. However, it is to use a ceramic crucible to calcinate galena, and then a layer of lead glaze can be born on the surface of the pottery crucible, and such a layer of lead glaze can be knocked off to form a primitive glazed material, like a jade-like lead barium glass.

After Sui Dan discovered this principle, he mixed and smelted with clay and quartz sand with purified galena, and added feldspar powder during smelting, thus obtaining a bead-shaped body of Suihou bead. And after he processed it on its surface, after adding dragonfly-like eyes, he could form such a beautiful bead.

Such a refining method made Dai Yan a little disappointed. In his opinion, such a smelting method could not get the glass he wanted. However, Sui Dan's method at least made him understand the basic methods of making glass, as well as the two main materials for making glass: quartz sand and feldspar powder.

Therefore, he still kept his promise, helped Sui Dan apply for a patent for the production of Sui Hou beads in Taoqiu, and had people contact merchants from other trading houses to let Sui Dan try to set up a factory for refining Sui Hou beads.

The real way to refine glass is to rely on himself to explore. He knows that glass is a silicate material, so obviously silica, that is, quartz sand, must be one of the refining materials of glass!

And for the rest of the material, he can only rely on his own speculation. In Dai Yan's view, since silica is a stable object, since it can generate silicate, it is obviously an acidic oxide similar to carbon dioxide.

How does carbon dioxide form carbonates? For this, Dai Yan couldn't be clearer! In the process of making cement, lime is used. And in the process of quicklime turning into hydrated lime, and hydrated lime turning into limestone, isn't it because of the carbon dioxide in the air?

Dai Yan can know that if you want to get silicate, you must use alkaline substances as raw materials. Taoqiu's current chemical industry has not started, and Dai Yan can only find natural alkaline substances in nature.

In nature, the most common alkaline substance is limestone. Although limestone is insoluble in water, it is a combination of strong alkali and weak acid, which is necessarily an alkaline substance.

At the beginning, Dai Yan mixed limestone, quartz sand and feldspar powder for smelting, and after a long time of smelting, he was able to get some slightly green glass. However, the yield obtained by this method is very small, and it can basically be regarded as a failed refining method.

Subsequently, Dai Yan began to look for other alkaline substances in nature. In his eyes, there are two substances that are relatively easy to obtain.

One of them is plant ash. Grass ash contains potassium carbonate, which is a substance that is easily soluble in water, which is basically dissolved, filtered and then evaporated, and basically crude potassium carbonate can be obtained. The potassium carbonate obtained by this method is also called oxalmine.

The other is soda ash, which is sodium carbonate. Soda ash, in later generations, there is a bull B boom Hou's alkali method can produce a large amount of soda ash. Because this alkali production method is based on the synthetic ammonia industry. In order to make synthetic ammonia, how much money Dai Yan has invested in the steel industry and even the chemical foundation, so far I have not heard a sound!

Dai Yan had also heard that in some salt lakes, certain tronas could be obtained by evaporating the salt lakes. And the easiest of them to get is baking soda. Baking soda is also sodium bicarbonate, and after heating, soda ash can be obtained. However, now in the place controlled by Dai Yan, there is no salt lake, and the method of extracting soda ash through the salt lake is also delusional!

Fortunately, although Taoqiu's chemical industry has not started, it is not without the slightest accumulation. In the previous process of making iodine wine, Dai Yan obtained iodine by purifying kelp. And in this process, when the kelp is burned to ashes, there is a by-product in it, and this by-product is soda ash!

Under Dai Yan's experiment, whether it is oxalin potassium carbonate or soda ash sodium carbonate, when smelting with quartz sand, limestone and feldspar powder, qualified glass can be obtained. The use of oxalate is potassium-lime glass, and soda ash is soda-lime glass. Compared with the two, potassium-lime glass is harder and tougher than soda-lime glass.

However, Dai Yan did not choose to use plant ash to make potassium and calcium glass. In his opinion, the potassium contained in plant ash is too important for the growth of plants, and Taoqiu should not destroy the development of agriculture and harm the interests of farmers just for the sake of making glass!

And even by calcining a large amount of kelp (and later calcining seaweed), the soda ash obtained is far from enough for the glass industry in Taoqiu!

Because through such a method, the soda ash obtained, not to mention the quantity compared with the Hou's alkali method, even compared with the soda ash obtained by the natural alkali fishing method in the salt lake, is also much inferior. And the soda ash prepared by this method is not all used in the glass industry!

Because through this method, the soda ash produced has been divided up by the Taoqiu people a few years ago and used for eating. Today's Taoqiu people are accustomed to wheat as the staple food, and everyone's favorite food is steamed buns made of flour.

And if you want to make qualified steamed buns, you must use soda ash! Steamed buns that don't use soda ash taste sour and sour, at least Dai Yan can't swallow them at all! When making steamed bread, if you can add soda ash when kneading the dough after fermentation, the resulting steamed bread not only has no sour taste, but also has a pine inside, which is easy to swallow!

In this way, the soda ash that can be used to produce glass becomes extremely rare, which naturally limits the production of glass.